Friday, May 31, 2013

Mexico Protests Monsanto with a Carnival of Corn

by Alex Mensing

Mexican
students from the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human Rights Center perform
during last Saturday’s Carnival of Corn — part of the worldwide
protests against Monsanto. (WNV / Alex Mensing)On May 25, an estimated two million people across 50 countries participated in the global March Against Monsanto.
Organizers estimate that these protests against the U.S.-based
transnational biotech corporation were one of the largest days of
coordinated action in history. Yet, despite the high level of
coordination, the local actions were not all orchestrated by
professional organizers — and nor were the resulting actions all
traditional marches.On Saturday, about 2,000 participants gathered in Mexico City for the Carnaval del Maíz, a “Carnival of Corn” to celebrate Mexico’s rich diversity of native corn, threatened by Monsanto’s plans to introduce a
genetically modified variety of the crop. The fact that Mexico’s
manifestation of the global March Against Monsanto took the form of a
carnival is no coincidence. The current generation of Mexican activists
is looking for new strategies to fight for social justice, and the March
Against Monsanto provided an opportunity to fuse tradition and
innovation into the building blocks for a global food revolution.The beginnings of the action came from an unlikely source: a novice
Mexico City activist named Thalía Güido. In early March, Güido found the
“March Against Monsanto” Facebook page and learned there was to be a
global protest on May 25.“I started to see [actions] in Africa, in Boston, and I said to
myself, how can it be that Mexico isn’t listed?” she remembered
thinking. After the organizers confirmed that there was nothing yet
planned for Mexico, she decided it was time to start planning.She started by contacting student-activists who had belonged to her
university’s chapter of Yo Soy 132, a movement that opposes Mexican
President Enrique Peña Nieto and the nation’s corporate media
conglomerate. They liked the idea, so she began reaching out to other
organizations.“I started sending emails like crazy,” said Güido.The momentum began building. At the first meeting, there were four
participants; by the fourth, the group barely fit in the room. By the
week before the event, more than 40 different organizations, as well as
independent activists, were involved in the organizing efforts —
although no one wore name tags identifying what institution they were
coming from. Güido attributes the rapid growth of the planning meetings
to the horizontal and citizen-oriented structure of the group, as well
as to the carnivalesque nature of the event.“The truth is I don’t want to be an ‘official organizer,’” Güido
often told the others. “I want this to grow as a citizen initiative.”Celebrating subversionAnother reason the event attracted so much participation is because
the target —Monsanto — is one of the largest and most reviled
corporations in the world. The global scale of last Saturday’s event
reflects the far-reaching influence of and animosity toward Monsanto,
which is embroiled in controversies around patent litigation, health
concerns, environmental destruction and small farmer oppression.Yet, the corporation’s presence is particularly threatening in
Mexico, where much of the rural culture centers on corn production. “It
affects everything because our culture revolves around corn,” said
farmer and activist Héctor Mendoza Rosas. “And with GMOs what you would
have to do is, you wouldn’t be selecting seed, you would be buying it.
You wouldn’t be saving seed. You’d have to by all of their stuff.”This threat to Mexico’s rural agricultural economy and sustainability
isn’t new. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into
effect in 1994, cheap corn from the United States has undercut small
Mexican farmers’ ability to make a living while maintaining the
traditional practices that preserve Mexico’s cultural and biological
diversity. But today’s plans to introduce a genetically modified crop
threatens the very global future of the crop’s genetic diversity because
Mexico is, organizers explained, “the center of origin and
diversification of corn.”Monsanto’s presence in Mexico is also seen as an attack, particularly
on the nation’s pre-Hispanic cultural values. “There is a very strong
nationalism in Mexico based on a mythology,” explained carnival
organizer Paula, who chose to share only her first name. “It has always been said that in one way or another, Mexicans come from corn.”The idea for a carnival stemmed from the organizers’ understanding of this pre-Hispanic culture, known as indigenismo, in which these festivals represent challenges to the ruling power.“The carnival in Mexico is subversive,” said Carlos Ventura
Callejas. He explained that in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest,
indigenous communities used the carnival as a way to preserve
traditional religious cultures in the face of imposed Catholicism.“Carnival time is a time to go out and think things that the system doesn’t allow you to think,” said Ventura.So, organizers thought: What better way to go to battle against Monsanto than by having a Carnival of Corn?A break from marchesThe idea of organizing a carnival instead of a traditional political march was also a strategic decision.“Something I’ve realized since getting more involved in Yo Soy 132 is
that protest is now seen as something obsolete,” explained Güido. “So
it really has to do with a redefinition, with a change in concept. We’re
going to put on a march, but we’re going to do it with a playful theme
instead of making it combative… We’re going to have creative spaces for
artists.”The strategic emphasis on creating a playful and festive space was,
in part, a reaction to the ugly street scene on the day of Enrique Peña
Nieto’s inauguration, when thousands massed to protest the presidential
imposition. Many of the people involved in organizing the Carnival for
Corn remember the bitterness that exploded that day, and both Güido and
Ventura saw it as a reason to organize a joyous carnival — especially
since the government subsequently rewrote the police protocol for
demonstrations, resulting in what Güido described as “an impressive
criminalization of protest.”The organizations and individuals involved in the planning sessions
set about filling the day’s itinerary with theater, workshops, music and
art, permeating the day’s scheduled march and speeches with
carnivalesque activities. The organizers also deployed social media and
their own livestream channel to spread the word. The message focused on
the global aspect of the day of action.At the Carnival of Corn’s press conference two days before the event,
Paula began by declaring that the carnival would allow Mexico to “unite
our voices” with those in more than 400 cities around the world. Then,
on Saturday, the livestream group 5oymexico.org
began broadcasting hours before the event in Mexico City began so that
they could share video, images and audio from anti-Monsanto actions in
places where the protests had already begun.The carnival beginsThe Carnival of Corn was, at its core, a celebration of Mexican
agricultural heritage. Children made seed bombs, known in Spanish as bolitas de vida, out of clay, soil and amaranth seeds.Hundreds participated in a play written by a local playwright that
showcased the importance of corn in Mexico and drew a parallel between
traditional mythological characters and modern-day actors. Organizers
distributed masks and audience-members-turned-actors assumed the role of
either Olmecs, an ancient indigenous people from southern Mexico, or
the minions of Tlaltecuhtli, pre-Hispanic god of the dead. A figure
playing Monsanto used the death-minions to steal native corn from the
Olmecs, but in the end the community organized to defeat him.Throughout the day, artists used performance and creativity to inform
the carnival’s estimated 2,000 participants about Monsanto. A theater
troupe from nearby San Miguel de Allende performed a show illustrating
the dangers of Monsanto’s genetically modified crops and the
corporation’s business practices. As performer Diana Hoogesteger
explained, “Theater is a way to get people to notice you. Once they see
you, they listen, and then they can be informed in an entertaining way
of the things that are happening in the world.”The carnival attracted both city residents and small farmers from
nearby rural communities who saw Monsanto’s presence as a threat to
their very livelihood. One participant, Delfino Santillán Castillo,
traveled from Zupango, a region about an hour outside of Mexico City. He
lamented that he now has trouble selling the native corn seed that he
saves every year. He wife also expressed fear, particularly over
Monsanto’s exclusive patents.“If a Monsanto seed ends up on our land… they will sue us and take away everything we have,” she said.The two heard about the action through a community radio program that
had interviewed one of the Carnival’s organizers. Castillo explained
that they prefer the radio over corporate news stations. “The television
doesn’t tell the truth,” he said. “It just speaks in favor of the
government and nothing else interests it.”The day also attracted people from activist organizations, such as Guillermo Rizo Ornelas, who works with Ecos del Buen Vivir,
an organization dedicated to environmental justice, human rights,
education and health issues. He called on the government to practice the
precautionary principle —
the idea that precautionary measures should be taken with potentially
harmful activities even if the harmful effects have not yet been clearly
proven.After marching to the Monument to the Revolution in downtown Mexico
City, the local Food Not Bombs chapters collaborated to nourish the
hungry protesters, who continued talking, laughing and performing as
they shared what the March Against Monsanto is finally all about: a
meal. Presentations by various organizations followed, as well as music
by artists including Roco, from one of Mexico City’s most famous urban
bands, Maldita Vecindad.At the end of the day, Thalía Güido’s speech echoed what she had expressed throughout the planning process.“This isn’t just a crossroads here in Mexico,” she told journalists.
“We’ve created a worldwide network of communication between movements,
organizations, people — between everyone who is in favor of the freedom
of food and food sovereignty. So we believe that this is really part of a
food revolution.”Organizers have not yet planned their next action, but they have
their eyes on even more symbolic date: September 29, Mexico’s National
Day of Corn.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

GMO Crop Sabotage on the Rise: French citizens destroy trial vineyard

May 21, 2013GMO grapevines destroyed (AFP) By Rady AnandaFood Freedom
Early Sunday morning, French police stood helpless as sixty people,
locked inside an open-air field of genetically modified grapevines,
uprooted all the plants. In Spain last month, dozens of people destroyed
two GMO fields. On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt cotton
in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Ignored by multinational
corporations and corrupt public policy makers, citizens act to protect
the food supply and the planet. The French vineyard is the same
field attacked last year when the plants were only cut. But the
security features installed after that incident kept authorities at bay
while the group accomplished its mission yesterday. Speaking for the group, Olivier Florent told Le Figero that they condemned the use of public funds for open-field testing of GMOs “that we do not want.”
Pitching tents in the rain near France’s National Institute for
Agronomic Research (INRA) site in Colmar the night before, the group
waited until 5 AM before converging on the site and locking the gates
behind them. They uprooted all 70 plants, then submitted to arrest.
This is the second attack on GMO crops to make international news this
year. In July dozens of people destroyed two experimental corn crops in
Spain. In an anonymous press release,
they wrote, “This kind of direct action is the best way to respond to
the fait accompli policy through which the Generalitat, the State and
the biotech multinationals have been unilaterally imposing genetically
modified organisms.” In the late 1990s, Indian farmers burnt Bt cotton fields in their [url=http://www.raqsmediacollective.net/globalvillage/work/Monsanto's%20Cremation%20Karnataka.htm]Cremate
Monsanto[/url] campaign. Monsanto did not disclose to farmers that the
GM seeds were experimental. “Despite the heavy use of chemical
fertiliser, traces of which still can be observed in the field, the Bt
plants grew miserably, less than half the size of the traditional cotton
plants in the adjacent fields.”
After the Haiti earthquake this year, Monsanto offered 475 tons of
hybrid corn and terminator vegetable seeds in partnership with USAID. In
June, 10,000 Haitian farmers marched
in protest of the “poison gift” which produces no viable seeds for
future plantings and requires heavy chemical inputs. Haitian farm leader
Chavannes Jean-Baptiste observed that the biotech plan makes farmers
dependent on multinational corporations. In the US, GMOs were
secretly foisted on the public in the mid-1990s, and only now is the US
Supreme Court addressing the scourge. In June, the high court upheld partial deregulation of GM alfalfa,
which permits limited planting while the USDA prepares an Environmental
Impact Statement. Natural and organic alfalfa supply is threatened by
the very real potential of GM contamination. This would destroy the organic meat and dairy industry. Last Friday, a federal court took a tougher position on GM sugar beets. Judge Jeffrey S. White revoked USDA approval of the GM beet, while allowing for its planting this year only. Also this month, a British farmer exposed that milk and meat from cloned animals had secretly entered the food supply. Public opposition to GM crops has grown in recent years as more evidence surfaces that DNA-altered crops: Require massive chemical inputs which destroy local biodiversity and poison the water tables;[/*]Cross-pollinate with natural and weedy crops;[/*]Create superweeds; and[/*]Have been shown to cause organ damage, sterility, and diabetes and obesity in mammals.[/*][/list]Meanwhile, President Obama has stacked his Administration with biotech insiders going so far as to appoint Islam Siddiqui
as Agriculture Trade Negotiator. Siddiqui is a former pesticide
lobbyist and vice president of CropLife America, a biotech and pesticide
trade group that lobbies to weaken environmental laws. The US is pushing hard at the world to accept GM foods. Recently, the American Farm Bureau Federation called for stronger sanctions against the European Union for its GM crop ban.
But as governments and trade agreements circumvent the will of the
people, some take matters into their own hands. The rise in GMO crop
destruction is a clear indication that the world’s people reject
chemical and genetic pollution of the food supply and the environment. SOURCE: http://www.blacklistednews.com/GMO_Crop_Sabotage_on_the_Rise%3A_French_citizens_destroy_trial_vineyard/26148/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Monsanto's 'Genetic Pollution' Threatens US Wheat Industry

"Our trading partners do not want genetically modified wheat"

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

A wheat field in Oregon. (Photo: Elias Gayles/cc/flickr) The U.S. wheat industry is reaping the swift global repercussions of the genetic pollution caused by Monsanto's rogue glyphosate-resistant wheat on an Oregon farm."This
will have an impact worldwide, because our trading partners do not want
genetically modified wheat," Michael Hansen, senior scientist at
Consumers Union, told Bloomberg.Katsuhiro Saka, a counselor at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, added, "In most countries the unapproved genetically modified wheat would be a target of concern."Already, as the New York Times reports,

Japan and South Korea suspended some imports of American wheat, and
the European Union urged its 27 nations to increase testing, after the
United States government disclosed this week that a strain of
genetically engineered wheat that was never approved for sale was found
growing in an Oregon field.

Seed giant Monsanto tested its genetically engineered (aka
genetically modified) glyphosate-resistant wheat variety between 1998
and 2005 in 16 states.But fear of such international backlash is what prompted Monsanto to abandon its GE wheat project, as Emma Hedman explains in Friends of the Earth's blog:

In 2004 Monsanto, the world’s biggest genetically engineered seed company, pulled their GE wheat from the USDA’s approval process
because of growing pressure from some of the most important
international importers of United States wheat, including Japan, the UK,
Malaysia, and Canada. These international consumers were weary of
having genetically engineered foods as part of their food supply, and
because Monsanto realized they would have no market for their wheat
(since the US exports over 50% of its wheat), it abandoned the project.
This is of course after they had already implemented field tests of the
wheat in 16 states. The last field test of this GE wheat in Oregon was
supposed to have been in 2001, and yet here it is.

The finding of the rogue wheat has prompted sharp criticism from food safety and environmental advocates.“This was not from a recent trial, which means it’s been sitting there in the environment,” the Washington Post reports Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit group, as saying. “It’s highly doubtful that it’s just on one farm. If it’s out there, it’s out there.”In a similar statement, Mike Flowers, a cereal specialist at Oregon State University, told Reuters, "We can't really say if it is or isn't in other fields. We don't know.""Our farmers and food supply are severely jeopardized by such
contamination episodes, yet the biotech industry responsible faces no
accountability," Bill Freese, science policy analyst for Center for Food
Safety, said in a statement. "Moreover, the industry operates with
little transparency, leaving both the public and regulators in the
dark,” he said.The only way to avoid more such episodes, write Greenpeace's Janet Cotter and Eric Darier, is to drop genetically engineered crops entirely:

The Monsanto GE wheat contamination shows again that governments and
industry measures to prevent contamination are failing. The only
permanent solution is to immediately ban the field testing of GE crops.More fundamentally, the world urgently needs to switch to ecological
farming and get out of the chemical/GE industrial agriculture treadmill
and the environmental risks it represents.

_________________________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Cultivation of GM crops has caused great debate. Now, the last of the food that cultivated GMOs in Denmark chose to drop cultivation.
Monsanto has been in the process of testing the possibilities of
production of various GM crops in Denmark, but it is now ended, ABC
News, in collaboration with the Center for Investigative Journalism in Denmark (Investigative Reporting Denmark) tell.

"In Europe, Monsanto sells only GM maize in the three countries. GMO corn is less than one percent of the EU's growing maize on land. Field trials are only started in three countries. We will not spend more money to convince people to plant them. "Brandon Mitchener, PR Officer for Monsanto in Europe.

- In Europe, Monsanto sells only GM maize in the three countries. GMO corn is less than one percent of the EU's growing maize on land. Field trials are only started in three countries. We will not spend more money to convince people to plant them, says Brandon Mitchener as PR Officer for Monsanto in Europe.

GMO upoplært across Europe

The decision was made behind closed doors, and the company saw no reason to tell about it. Even if it means that all food businesses has now abandoned GM crops in Denmark - and most of Europe.
- It is not surprising when you know chemical company BASF stopped
their biotech trials in Europe in 2012 and agro company Syngeta moved
their studies several years earlier.
This will have an effect on the international spread of GM crops
globally, says Klaus Sall has studied GM industry for several years and
has just released a progress report on the development of GM crops in
the EU. From the Danish authorities confirm you that it's over with GM crops in Denmark.
- At the moment there is no GM crop trials in Denmark registered with
Nature Business Authority, says Kristine Riskær who is Head of Seeds and
Plants at NaturErhversstyrelsen, in cooperation with the EPA's
authority in connection with trials of GM crops in Denmark. She notes, however, that in principle can get request for new field trials in the future.

Too much complaining throughout Europe

The cultivation of GM crops in Denmark has so far been on a trial basis. Experiments which should lead to a genuine production of, for example, genetically modified maize among other Danish fields. But the last field trials, the company behind Monsanto, now stopped. Partly because of consumer resistance to GM food and partly by poor test results.

"The principle want Monsanto to sell biotech seeds in countries where
there is widespread support for them among consumers and politicians,
while there must be a working, research-based regulated system. Conditions which are only present in a few countries in Europe today. "Brandon Mitchener, Monsanto

Will only work where there is a happy consumers

- The principle want Monsanto to sell biotech seeds in countries where
there is widespread support for them among consumers and politicians,
while there must be a working, research-based regulated system. Conditions which are only present in a few countries in Europe today, says Brandon Mitchener.
He explains further that Monsanto stopped most field trials, including
in Denmark, as a result of a strategic decision in 2011 to focus the
company's activities in Europe on conventional crops.

Danish agricultural capsized adventure

Talk about GM crops in Danish farmland were given extra momentum in
2009, when then-Agriculture and Food Minister Eva Kjer Hansen presented
Monsanto's first three attempts in the production of GM crops in
Denmark.
She told then that in three years time, Denmark would be ready to
accept genetically modified crops, and many farmers would grow them.
She even invited the Danish press corps on farm visits in Tystofte by
Skaelskoer to talk about Danish agricultural next adventure. Two years later expanded Monsanto their field trials for another year by a total of five different crops. The results of the studies have never been published, therefore the Center for Investigative Journalism in Denmark and Transparency parliament sought access .

Bad GM maize stopped future

The procedure is that the authorities shall test new crops being tested
for two years before they may be approved for sale and cultivation in
Denmark. It turns out that field trials failed in the second year. In February 2011, the authorities refused one of GM crops from Monsanto on the basis of field experiments.
Specifically, it was about GM maize, which should be resistant to the
herbicide Round-Up, but since GM maize only developed 97 percent
compared to conventional maize, Monsanto should not expect to get yes
for cultivation in Denmark.

Devastating that companies can stop bad results

Then canceled Monsanto other field trials before they were finished. And therefore avoided further discussion of these trials. Centre for Investigative Journalism has tried to gain access to the study results - without success.

"- It is devastating to the scientific method when firms may decide that only positive results are published.
This is a good example of the need for a requirement that companies
must accept free access to their GMO seeds for scientific studies when
they are approved for import into the EU. "Klaus Sall, biologist and GMO expert

- It is devastating to the scientific method when firms may decide that only positive results are published.
This is a good example of the need for a requirement that companies
must accept free access to their GMO seeds for scientific studies when
they are approved for import into the EU, says Klaus Sall.
Monsanto says the Center for Investigative Journalism (Investigative
Reporting Denmark) in Denmark that some of the results from field
experiments will be published later this year.Source: http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2013/05/28/184747.htm

From Food Security to Food Sovereignty

(Photo: via Civil Eats)It’s
an exciting time for the good food movement. Sometimes it can feel as
though the efforts to make agriculture more sustainable are the most
visible and active component of the broader environmental movement. This
shouldn’t be surprising. Our relationship to food is visceral,
emotional, and continues daily. If you’ve seen Food, Inc. or read any Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, or Rachel Carson,
you know that the sustainable food movement is trying to address the
social and environmental problems created by an industrial farming
system in which convenience and profit trump everything else.The responses to industrial farming have included critiques like
Silent Spring, the back-to-the-land and organic farming sparks of the
late 1960s, the family farm movement that resisted bankruptcy and
corporate consolidation in the 1980s, and now the urban farming movement
that has burgeoned in the past 10 years.Many elements of the sustainable food movement have been organized by
(or for) the two most obvious sectors of the food system: Eaters and
producers. In parts of the world where populations are still largely
agrarian, eaters and producers are often the same people, but here in
the United States (where the farming population hovers around one
percent) consumers have been the dominant focus of food policy, at least
for the past 40 years.The food movement’s shift from security to
sovereignty can be instructive for the broader movements for
environmental sanity and democratic governance. By asking the simple
question, “Who’s in charge here?” food sovereignty elevates the importance that power has in our food systems.In the global North, much of the past 20 years of activism has framed
the concept of “food security” as the right of all people to have
enough food to avoid hunger and malnutrition. A new effort underway to
deepen food activism focuses on a more radical idea: The concept of food
sovereignty. The global food sovereignty movement is making the
case that reform of the food system will be insufficient if it does not
democratize and make more transparent the means of food production.
We’ll never be able to resolve the environmental and social abuses of
industrial agriculture without changing who controls the food system.As Katherine Zavala, program manager of grassroots alliances at International Development Exchange (IDEX),
a San Francisco-based organization that supports food justice in the
Global South, explains it: “Food security might focus on hunger as a
human rights issue, but it fails to consider many other facets of food
like the ways it is produced, the social relationships it relies on, or
the cultural importance it holds to communities.”Having enough to eat is important, certainly, but what about the
quality of that food? What about the way that people are treated in the
process of producing that food? What about the cultural traditions of
food that are left aside in a purely calorie-counting concept of “food
security”? Zavala says that perhaps the biggest inadequacy of the food
security concept is that it fails to address “who decides what the food
system is. It doesn’t address who is driving or controlling the global
food system or the lack of decision-making power among people to decide
what food system they want.”These deeper questions illustrate why the term “food sovereignty”–pioneered by the international peasant alliance La Via Campesina–is
increasingly being adopted food movement activists across the globe.
Ashoka Finley, who works for the Richmond, California urban farming
organization Urban Tilth and has been closely involved in the Occupy the Farm effort at the University of California’s Gill Tract, considers himself a food sovereignty activist.He says: “Food sovereignty, like food security, is about rights. But
because food sovereignty as a concept argues that food systems are
determined by political and economic conditions, it’s about the rights
we as eaters, citizens, and communities should have to take part in
effecting those conditions. It is also about how we can use food-based
activism to transform the political and economic system we live in.”That “taking part” is what distinguishes food security from food
sovereignty, and what makes food sovereignty such a compelling and
important idea. Yes, of course, providing food for people in need is
essential, but a soup kitchen a food bank or a Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP) card is not enough to create food sovereignty.
Even planting gardens in urban areas (full disclosure: my area of
employment!) doesn’t amount to food sovereignty.Direct action approaches like Occupy the Farm may not be enough,
because, Zavala reminds us, “Those that are in positions of government
and economic power are restricting these alternative food system models.
They’re not thinking about feeding people; they’re mostly thinking
about the bottom line. And if we all created our own food systems, how
would they profit?”The entrenched corporate opposition to food systems change has pushed
food sovereignty activists beyond the direct action approach to address
the institutions of power. After a long period of focusing effort
outside the political system, activists are now looking to the
government for change. In the mid-2000s, for example, the federal Farm
Bill finally became a top priority for many sustainable agriculture
advocates. Long after the law was the main target of efforts to ensure
food security (through SNAP). But, it has remained close to impossible
to use the Farm Bill as a tool to promote food sovereignty.“The current political climate is an extreme difficult one, the
legislative process is complex, and that process can often be quite
corrupt, as we have seen numerous times,” Finley says. “However, if we
want food sovereignty, we can’t shy away from tough political battles,
because there are certain political issues that underpin or undermine
food sovereignty, like land ownership or agribusiness subsidies.”Recent lobbying over the Farm Bill provides a clear example of the
complexity and difficulty transitioning from a food security movement to
a food sovereignty movement. Food security activists (often
representing low income urban constituents) have been pitted against
farm sustainability activists (more often rural-minded) over the funding
that the bill controls. In an era of austerity, this can lead to
Sophie’s-choice like dilemmas: Either cut food stamp funding or cut
programs that provide support to farmers transitioning to organic
methods of production.Luckily, there’s an alternative to this false choice. That choice is
to develop democratic spaces at the local and state level to craft
collaborative solutions that benefit both consumers and producers.
Across the country, Food Policy Councils
(FPCs) are bringing together diverse constituencies to determine how
local policy can be leveraged to achieve positive food system change.
These local groups identify problems as a community and then seek to
solve them through a process of consensus-building and pressuring local
governments. Food Policy Councils have worked on things like
institutional food procurement, the use of urban open space for
agriculture, nutrition education and funding for food banks. More
recently, FPCs are scaling up, coming together to affect policy on the
state and federal levels.The food movement’s shift from security to sovereignty can be
instructive for the broader movements for environmental sanity and
democratic governance. By asking the simple question, “Who’s in charge here?”
food sovereignty elevates the importance that power has in our food
systems. The concept expands our critical capacity beyond consumer
choice to consider that we are all “co-producers” of the food system.
“Sovereignty” is a frame that can be used to think about process
in relation to natural resources, not just outcomes, and it can help
encourage solidarity and cohesion amongst myriad movements and sectors
within the food movement and outside of it.Social movements focused on sovereignty can help build a more
democratic and accountable political system. This, in turn, would allow
for a more sustainable approach to natural resources, and a more
egalitarian economic system. By talking “sovereignty” from the start,
change-makers can pursue a mutual end goal from any number of individual
struggles. When Paul Hawken described “the largest movement on Earth”
in his book Blessed Unrest, he was clear that the millions of individual and NGO efforts to help were a movement, but just didn’t act like one.Sovereignty, whether of food or fiber or healthcare, may the concept
needed for these many struggles to become the movement that it could be.

Monsanto Statement on USDA GM Wheat Report

5/29/2013

While Monsanto will work with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) to get to the bottom of the reported genetically
modified wheat detection, there are no food, feed or environmental
safety concerns associated with the presence of the Roundup Ready gene
if it is found to be present in wheat. The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) confirmed the food and feed safety of Roundup Ready
wheat more than a decade ago. The Roundup Ready gene, which is widely
used in multiple crops and by millions of farmers globally, has been
also reviewed and approved by regulatory authorities in every country
around the world to which crops containing that gene have been submitted
for cultivation or import approval, including Japan, Korea and the EU. Over the past decade, an annual average of 58 million acres of
wheat have been planted in the United States. This is the first report
of the Roundup Ready trait being found out of place since Monsanto’s
commercial wheat development program was discontinued nine years ago.
Our process for closing out the Roundup Ready wheat program was
rigorous, well-documented and audited. We understand that USDA’s
findings are based solely on testing samples from a single 80-acre
field, on one farm in Oregon, which overwintered from the previous
growing season. As is the normal practice in this part of the country,
wheat fields are left fallow following the previous harvest and sprayed
with glyphosate to control weeds and to preserve soil moisture. The
company noted that this report is unusual since the program was
discontinued nine years ago, and this is the only report after more than
500 million acres of wheat have been grown. Accordingly, while USDA’s
results are unexpected, there is considerable reason to believe that the
presence of the Roundup Ready trait in wheat, if determined to be
valid, is very limited.We will work with USDA to confirm their test results and as
they consider appropriate next steps. We will also conduct a rigorous
investigation to validate the scope of and to address any presence of a
Monsanto Roundup Ready event in commercial wheat seed.Earlier this month, USDA contacted us and requested information
pertaining to an investigation into whether hard-to-control wheat from
this field may contain a glyphosate-tolerance gene. We have provided
materials, methods and offered technical assistance. The necessary
testing requires sophisticated methods, considerable expertise and
meticulous laboratory techniques to generate reliable
results. Commercial test strips, which are used to detect the presence
of glyphosate tolerance in soybeans, canola, cotton and sugar beets,
generate a very high incidence of false positive detections (greater
than 90 percent) and are not reliable for wheat. We have asked for
information necessary to confirm the presence of the Roundup Ready trait
in the samples that were tested. Up to this point, Monsanto has not
received details about the testing USDA has performed, nor has UDSA
provided us with samples necessary to verify their findingsImportantly, as all parties work to verify these
findings, the glyphosate-tolerance gene used in Roundup Ready wheat has a
long history of safe use. The gene that was used in Roundup Ready wheat
also produces the same protein that has been and is used widely in
corn, soy and several other crops by millions of farmers throughout the
world. Source: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/monsanto-statement-on-usda-gm-wheat.aspx

GMO Labeling Law Proposed in New York

New York joins the vanguard group of nearly two dozen states trying to pass a law requiring labeling of food or food products containing genetically engineered material.Under the proposed law, any unlabeled food product containing more
than 9/10th of 1% of total weight of genetically engineered material
would be mis-branded and subject to punishment.The twin bills introduced in the New York State Assembly and Senate,
however, provide for a number of exemptions. One such carve out exempts
from the labeling requirement food from animals fed GMO feed or treated
with GMO vaccines. Other exemptions are for raw
agricultural commodities unintentionally contaminated by GMOs and for
alcoholic beverages.GMO Free NY, a group
of volunteers passionate about the issue, in conjunction with their
partners at Food & Water Watch, NOFA-NY, and the Center for Food
Safety, is working with state legislators and consumers to bring the
Assembly and the Senate bills — currently in committees — to a floor
vote before the legislation session ends on June 20 and the bills
expire.Stacie Orell, GMO Free NY’s campaign director, urges New
Yorkers to contact all members of the Senate Consumer Protection
Committee, and members of the Committee on Consumer Affairs and
Protection in the Assembly to encourage the members to co-sponsor the
bills and approve them for a floor vote. New Yorkers can also let their
local representatives know that they support the GMO labeling
legislation.Public voices can make a big difference on this issue. If the bills
are not reported out of the committees for a floor vote, then they are
dead “for the duration of this two-year term and must be reintroduced
anew in 2015,” explains Orell. If, however,
the committee leadership refers the bills to another committee or they
are reported for a floor vote but that does not occur before June 20th,
they “will be considered again and/or voted on once legislators return
to Albany in January 2014,” adds Orell.Orell told GMO Journal that “it’s time for Americans to gain the same
right to know whether their food has been genetically modified as the
citizens of 64 other nations already have. And in the absence of an FDA
mandate to label, it’s been left up to the states to enact legislation.”GMO Free NY is part of a nationwide movement “to give Americans the
right to know when GMOs are in our food. Moms, dads, kids, scientists,
farmers, grocers, food producers – ALL OF US WHO EAT FOOD – will benefit
from state-level efforts to mandate GMO labeling.” (emphasis in the
original).The Assembly Bill (A3525) was introduced by Linda B. Rosenthal and currently has 50 co-sponsors. The Senate bill (S3835) is sponsored by Kenneth LaValle and has 4 co-sponsors.

We invite you to comment on this article and share our story with others.

Non-Approved GMO Wheat Found On Oregon Farm

Discovery of Monsanto crop may affect food-label fight

- Common Dreams staff

(Photo: Florin Gorgan/ Flickr)Wednesday afternoon, officials with the US Department of Agriculture announced the detection of a non-approved strain of genetically modified (GMO) wheat on an 80-acre Oregon farm.Bloomberg News reports:

A farmer attempting to kill wheat with Monsanto’s
Roundup herbicide found several plants survived the weedkiller, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture said today in a statement.

The
Roundup Ready wheat is the same genetically engineered strain that was
being tested from 1998 to 2005 by GM giant Monsanto - the world’s
largest seedmaker. It was never approved for use by the USDA. In 2004,
Monsanto announced that they were stopping efforts to commercialize the
wheat after facing widespread opposition from farmers, food
manufacturers, environmentalists and consumers.Reuters reports that today's discovery may change the national debate over the labeling of GMO foods:

"I think it will have a significant impact," said
Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association,
which battled to keep genetically modified wheat out of the marketplace
years ago.

The U.S. Senate last week rejected by a wide
margin a measure to allow states to order labeling of food made with
genetically engineered, or GE, crops. Cummins said the discovery of the
rogue plants in Oregon would accelerate efforts to require GE food
labels.

"Virtually every major wheat-user in the world had already rejected
this product before it even was allowed on the market," Juan Lopez of
Friends of the Earth International said at the time. "This must be one of the most rejected products ever developed."In addition to concerns about the safety of genetically modified
seeds and their corruption of other crops, the USDA is worried about the
discovery's "potential threat to trade with
other countries that have concerns about genetically modified food," as
the US exports nearly half of its wheat crop.The USDA is investigating how it ended up in the field. Officials have not commented on how it may have gotten there.